WARNING/ Poetry Potluck #39

                                                     painting/ Don Punchatz


THIS WEEK, we are asked to produce a poem for Poetry Potluck #39, around the theme of Dictatorship, Autocracy, and Despotism.  Serious stuff...


WARNING

Don't move your eyes,
look straight ahead!
Follow the art of tyrants
who paint bogus landscapes.

Then, when your inner light dies,
carry a lantern without radiance
down a despot's path.

Look straight ahead!
Face a wall.
You have no one to fault
but yourself.


copyright/ all rights reserved/ 2011


http://www.minblu.blogspot.com
http://twitter.com/lynxny

SURVIVAL/ Poetry Potluck #30

THIS WEEK'S Poetry Potluck #30, brings us the challenge of Evolution, Environment, and Survival.  I insist on surviving.  That's it!


SURVIVAL

I learned to paint my heart with camouflage,
walk on the ceiling when the floor swayed.
Sometimes I slipped into a crack,
next to the vermin.

Became skilled at being a wall.
Found the chalk and lead within,
not poison to me at all.

I am from ashes come,
hiding as a quantum speck
in the cosmic funhouse,
before heaven claims me.

Let God just wait for my intent.
I mean to write a full opera
in any key I want.


copyright/ all rights reserved/ 2011


http://www.ellerochelle.blogspot.com/
http://twitter.com/lynxny

ROSES ONCE MORE/ A Pantoum

I've mentioned before that I have a real fondness for the poetic form known as the PANTOUM.  It's a form that first appeared in the 15th century in Malayan literature.  The Western version is a poem of indefinite length made up of stanzas whose four lines are repeated in a pattern, and whose last stanza is a bit twisty.  I still have to refer to notes when I try to tackle a Pantoum.  Lines 2 and 4 become lines 1 and 3 in the next stanza..this will help!!  The point is that each line gets to appear twice.


ROSES ONCE MORE

Help me live like a streak of lightning,
please solve my failure to float.
I'm shouting into my hand
as I clutch a tiny saint.

Please solve my failure to float.
Push me off the ledge,
as I clutch a tiny saint.
Let me see passion and roses once more.

Push me off the ledge.
I'm stir crazy by now,
let me see passion and roses once more.
Don't care if love's a cliche'.

I'm stir crazy by now,
seems like I'm nailed to the wall.
Don't care if love's a cliche',
make it shine like crystal again.

Seems like I'm nailed to the wall.
I'm shouting into my hand,
make it shine like crystal again.
Help me live like a streak of lightning.

copyright/all rights reserved/2011


http://www.minblu.blogspot.com/
http://twitter.com/lynxny

Messages...

MESSAGES

A fold of paper
holds my prayer.
I find my niche
in the crumbling stone.
My message is tucked
into a fracture.

Walls shield temples
and bells in the wind
offer the reassurance
of God listening.

Just as fountains receive
the coins of return,
slivers chip off
the archeology of walls
to become the sands of time.

A compelling question
once was clutched
in the hand of a maiden.
She slipped her prayer
under a rock.

Did she get the life she pleaded for,
or did she get a life of plagues?

But that was a thousand years ago,
how can it matter now?

I pray for blessings,
I pray for the maiden,
as I slip my fate
between the stones.


@copyright/ all rights reserved/ 2010


http://www.minblu.blogspot.com/
http://twitter.com/lynxny

Unicorn

for: National Poetry Month,

a new effort, not from Two Ghosts.

x

x

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxTHE THREAD

X

One thread, tattered, lies hidden

beneath the surface of the tapestry.

x

Stand away from the wall

Stand back!

The guard protects the expanse

atop the marble steps.

x

Stand back from the wall.

x

The needlepoint, on tour,

gathers round it

the rapt consideration of centuries.

x

A vista of woven Unicorns,

the carpet first adorned a breezy

palace hall,

when each Duchess

dropped a stitch every hundred years.

x

One thread, never pulling free,

not attached to the heart,

a fiber serving no known purpose,

x

Not a bit of it seen,

not being there to the eye,

like being alive and not being somebody,

not only not famous

but a filament detached, floating unbound,

waiting within its perception

to be christened.

x

x

c copyright / all rights reserved

Post- It

xx excerpt from Two Ghosts:

xx

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxHAPPINESS

X

xxxxxxWere you ever happy?

xxxxxxxDid you write the moment down

xxxxxxxon a Post-it and place it on the wall?

xxxxxxx

x x xxxxDo you have so many stuck there

xxxxxxxthat you've all but lost the count?

xxxxxxxCan you pull one down at random

xxxxxxxto remind you what was yours?

xxxxxxx

xxxxxxxDoes it help at all right now

xxxxxxxas you kneel

xxxxxxxand pray in doubt,

xxxxxxxfor some deity to hear you?

xxxxxxx

xxxxxxxCan the wall contain another instant

xxxxxxxof notated bliss?............

xxxxxxx

xxxxxxx

xxxxxxx

order:

call 888-795-4274 ext.7876

http://www.xlibris.com/

http://www.amazon.com/

http://www.bn.com/

http://www.borders.com/

or at your bookstore

x

Two Ghosts/Lyn Rochelle